Your all-time top-3 house rules

[Kieddicus]

Originally Posted by hcobb

2: Replace Roll to miss with wild shot.

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

3. Instead of rolling against a characters own DX, a comparison is made between the opposing DX scores to arrive at a target score. This principle is also used when casting spells; Wizards IN against Spell IN.

hcobb and Chris Rice, I am interested in these house rules more. Do you mind explaining the exact details?

Originally Posted by tomc

For long dungeon crawls, I like a house rule I picked up this forum:

Track each wound separately, and let each wound be treated by a physicker individually after combat. So wounds of 2 or less have no long term consequence (as long as you survive the combat), but major injuries still do.

Didn't even realize this was a house rule I just assumed Physicker could heal 2 per wound based on how it is written.

1.) Make non-combat Talents cost the same for both Wizards & Heroes. And add an IQ-8 Talent called Adept (1) that lets Heroes learn Spells for 2 IQ.

2.) Reduce the ST requirement of weapons by 2, but make it so the DX penalty of amour also adds to the ST requirement of weapons. (A shortsword is ST 9; however carrying a shortsword while wearing half-plate is ST 13)

3.) Re-implement that increasing IQ after the game has started also increases your skill points.

[hcobb]

Here's my deletion of Roll To Miss.

https://www.hcobb.com/tft/house_rule...#thrownweapons

[Chris Rice]

Comparative DX works on the assumption that competing figures of equal DX have a 50/50 chance of hitting each other no matter what their actual DX score. As the DX numbers deviate, the chances of hitting change to reflect the exact difference. Example:

A DX14 v B DX14. Each needs 10 to hit
A DX14 v B DX13. A needs 11, B needs 10
A DX14 v B DX12. A needs 11, B needs 9

And so on.

[Kieddicus]

Thanks for expanding guys! I'll have to look at putting those into my games.

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I’m not sure about this. It seems to me that it will be almost impossible to hit higher DX figures using this rule. It also seems unrealistic that this could be used against giant weapons, huge monsters etc. How can you “parry” a giant club?

True to that first part, but then the higher DX figure could equally avoid all damage by disengaging before the other figure strikes. That was however how my old group played it, not how I would play it if I were to run any new games going forward -- I'd modify it to partial, variable damage stopped, but I'd definitely keep a Parry option.

As to the second part, we used a complicated formula that could result in disaster for attempting to parry a larger weapon with a smaller one -- no damage stopped and parry weapon broken to boot. That was a realistic yet cumbersome method I wouldn't want to use again, but that is how we played it years ago.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

We discuss a wide range of optional and variant rules for TFT in this sub-forum, but I'm interested in knowing what people really feel like they need and benefit from at the table. So, if you had to winnow all your rules fiddling down to exactly three sharply defined house rules to enact at your gaming table, what would they be?

1) Play TFT in a wargaming style. Play hexless using miniatures and terrain you would use in a wargaming table. Hexes become inches. A little less precise, but really opens up your gaming table.

2) Use book-study to partially learn talents or languages. When your character reads textbooks in game on a particular talent, they can buy it for half price after awhile.

3) Remove the restriction against Technology. Still keep it a medieval/renaissance world, but if a character wants to lead some musketeers into battle, let him. Have the mechanician's guild develop an antidote to gun-powder eating microbes. Let the Steampunker gate into the world and start developing mad-science. Have the chemists get copy of Monsanto's Chemistry 101 and have them start developing some household basics. Remember Cidri has already had just about any invention in its history and still has it somewhere on it. Having little bits here and there is only a natural result of some of that past being handed down or rediscovered through research. And as Asprin said in his Myth Adventures series, Demon is short for Dimension Hoppers. They could be your big bads and your allies.


A an aside, I would want a LOT more Talents available, which I could create. However, I think Steve Jackson's ban on that is probably a good idea. Otherwise, my talent creations would be getting to the volume of GURPS.

[larsdangly]

Nice! I like your concept of a hexless approach to table top play; sort of like 'Chainmail' but with a combat resolution system more suited to small skirmishes.

I also have a much wider variety of ~16th-17th century guns and contemporaneous tech in my campaign. I don't think of that as a house rule, per se, but it is definitely one of the first things you'd notice if you played at my table. I still use the 1 in 6 chance of a misfire and explosions on critical failures because it feels like something that should be a common risk with such weapons. I haven't bothered reducing the price of gun powder because the players keep happily buying it despite the cost and drawbacks, but there are so many other NPCs who cary guns that they manage to get a fair amount of powder just by looting bodies.

[David Bofinger]

A few I haven't really tested, but I think should be good:

1. Fatigue for Maximum Movement
   • Rule: A figure must spend 1 fatigue whenever it moves its full MA. A figure must spend 1 fatigue when it performs a half-MA action after moving half its MA (no rounding) in the movement phase.
   • Example: A figure with MA 10 must spend 1 fatigue to move 10 hexes, or to move 5 hexes and dodge, or to move five hexes and charge attack. But it could move 9 hexes, or move 4 hexes and dodge, or 4 hexes and charge attack, without spending fatigue. A character with 9 MA could move 4 hexes and attack without spending fatigue, because 4 is less than half of 9.
   • Motive: This rule reflect the exhaustion that comes from acting at the limits of one’s abilities, and introduces a tactical decision as to whether to use that last hex of possible movement. It also makes odd MA slightly more useful, should you have a house rule that gives you that.
2. Initiative and Action Tie-Breaks
   • Standard Rule: For figures with equal DX, tie-break order of actions in favour of the figure whose side won the initiative.
   • New Rule: Tie-break in favour of the side which moved first.
   • Motive: This makes moving first or last, which is 90% of the time a non-brain decision to move last, a bit more interesting.
3. Specialties
   • Basic Rule: A character may know and use a single one-point talent or spell that requires an IQ one point higher than the character possesses.
   • Example: A character with IQ 10 might buy Tactics (IQ 11, costs 1) provided the character had no other talents above IQ 10.
   • Clarification: If the character’s IQ increases then the talent purchased at the new IQ level ceases to be special. This rule can then be used to purchase a talent at the next level up.
   • More Generous Rule: A character may know a single multi-point talent that requires an IQ one point higher than the character possesses, but this talent acts as though its cost were doubled less one.
   • Example: A character with IQ 10 might buy Physicker (IQ 11, costs 2) at a cost of 3, provided the character had no other talents above IQ 10.
   • Preferred Rule: If the character’s IQ increases the cost of the talent returns to normal cost. If you’re using standard rules, I suggest giving back the extra experience points and allowing them to be spent on something else. If you’re using a talent point system like Classic then let them spend the extra talent points on something else.
   • Motive: It’s hard to explain why I think this works but one reason is I think this increases character variety. For instance in RAW IQ 11 has various desirable talents: Physicker, Tactics, Weapon Expert, Woodsman. A character who wants one of these talents is likely to pick up one or two more and so characters with several of these become common, even though they aren’t necessarily talents that particularly go together in a character. If a character is allowed to pick up one talent beyond their IQ then different characters will make different choices.

[Shostak]

I'm surprised we've not seen any nerfs of Illusion in this thread. I definitely advocate against illusions ever behaving "just like the real thing"--so no starting fires with an illusion of a flame or using an illusory axe to chop down a tree.

[Kieddicus]

Originally Posted by Shostak

I'm surprised we've not seen any nerfs of Illusion in this thread. I definitely advocate against illusions ever behaving "just like the real thing"--so no starting fires with an illusion of a flame or using an illusory axe to chop down a tree.

I don't have much in the way of nerfs at the moment, but I do allow people to move their full MA and disbelieve.